To Dance
by Cathook
Summary: The episode Shindig according to River. Part 4 of my retelling Firefly series.
1. To Dance - Chapter 1

**To Dance**

* * *

 **Summary:** The episode _Shindig_ according to River. Part 4 of my retelling _Firefly_ series; in which I explore River's possible experiences throughout the series.

 **A/N** : This was a difficult one. River's actions can be interpreted in many different ways, and with different levels of deliberateness. This story reflects one such possible interpretation, but not even my only one. Please feel free to leave a **review** with your opinion. (just keep it civil)

* * *

Tendrils of emotions find River in her sleep. They pull her gently from the dark. She doesn't mind waking up like this, drawn from her sleep by the subconscious call of her friends. Far too often she wakes thrashing and screaming in some vain attempt to escape the memories crashing through her unconscious mind in the shapes of dreams. Her dreams make sleep feel like a moment of weakness; the memories become beast that pry on her when she is without defense.

Her mind reaches out for the feelings, sifting through them, letting them sift through her. In a moment of clearness she wonders how her mind can do this, how _she_ does it, but just as quickly as it came, the moment passes and the question fades away.

A sense of haste is the overtone in what reaches her; it laces each of the three crewmembers returning to the ship. River knows they were gone, she felt them leave. Sensed their feet stepping out of Serenity's protective embrace. The ape-man, big and clunky, the captain, strong and confident, and the flower, smooth as a wisp of wind. They were gone for a while, she cannot tell not how long, time is too fluid, but she knows they have returned, with haste in their steps.

There's amusement too, intermingled with the hurry, and shaded in different nuances to fit the diverse characters. The ape-man wears his merriment openly and the cause of it is equally clear. _Violence._ The opportunity to throw a few punches always makes the ape-man happy. River isn't sure how it makes her feel, and that in itself worries her. She flees to the amalgamation of emotions still to be explored. The captain's amusement is less overt than the ape-man's, but it is just as obvious. The flower is a puzzle though. She wears a frown on her face but River sees her insides. Sees them bubble with giggles she refuses to let the captain see. Whatever he did that was so amusing, she won't let him know she thinks so. _Never lets the captain know what he really makes her feel inside. Covers it up with a scowl and scorn and sharp remarks in an everlasting dance of deception._

 _Dummy! What is the point of such a dance…dancing around each other as if you cannot see? Why can't they see?_ River sees plain enough. Sees the captain and the flower, sees their true selves and emotions. The fire that burns behind the walls they've both built. One reaching towards the other, but never letting on. Feelings held back and bound down by fears and phantoms of the past, covered up by excuses. River knows the word for the behavior, read it once in a psychology book. _Defensive strategies – an approach designed to reduce the risk of loss. Lock the heart away to hide from the pain._

 _Pain..._ There's pain everywhere. There is no hiding from it. It's in the air, soaring, scorching, cutting, burning into her mind to meet with the pain erupting from within herself. There's a difference between them, the two pains, but when the whirl storm sweeps her mind away she finds it hard to distinguish between others and herself. _Maybe I need a defense. A defensive strategy. Strategy – the science of combining and employing the means of war in planning and directing military movements and operations. Famous tactics include the surprise attack employed by Arminius in 9AD way back on Earth-That-Was, guerilla warfare employed by the Independents in the Unification War, deception…_

Her mind dances away on definitions, classifications, memories of lessons learned. There were lessons at the Academy. There must have been, because she actually believed for a while that it was a school. _School is a place of education, instruction, learning_. She learned a lot at the Academy. She did, though exactly what she can never quite remember. There are snippets of information, flashes of knowledge that have been hammered into her fractured mind like nails that broke it into even smaller pieces, and the details get lost in the jumble. But the lessons are there, somewhere, waiting to be implemented, the wisdom of a thousand military strategists seared into place in her brain with drugs and pain, just waiting to be used. _Driver software for the weapon._

A little part of her knows what she is. _A weapon._ Knows what they did to her, what they turned her into. And sometimes she knows that she knows, and the knowledge threatens to pull her under. To drown her with its weight. The memories are vivid and suffocating, like a hundred tons of swirling water on her head. Her mind is drowning, desperately struggling for air. Lost in a sea that is a labyrinth inside her head. Searching, searching for a way out, for clarity, for control that she just doesn't have.

She surfaces to a shudder running through Serenity's hull. The ship is entering atmosphere. The shakes are too violent, she notes, her mind whirling off into velocity and force calculations. _Coming in to steep._ There's comfort in the numbers, firm and safe – like the leaf's grip on the ship controls. He won't let them crash, will bring them down safely. She knows this, because she can see his spirit soar, fluttering on the wind with ease even as the vessel fights with friction and gravity alike. He is a point of calm guiding them in to the planet waiting below.

A streak of worry slashes across her consciousness, the captain stalking through the ship towards the flower's shuttle. Involuntarily her mind is drawn to him, follows him to witness him barge in as he always does. He is acting the contradiction again, so full of honor and yet so uninterested in propriety, his very own kind of respect twisted from a complete lack of it.

Inara is on the cortex, talking to a man down on the planet below through her monitor. The man is too far away for River to sense; she can only see him through the eyes and emotions of the flower and the captain. The flower thinks fondly of him, like she thinks fondly of the captain but still sharply different. With the captain everything is complicated, but for the man on the screen she has a simple, warm emotion. She knows how to handle it, and him.

The captain catches a glimpse of the screen and a surge of jealousy flares inside him. The hotness of it makes River flinch, but he is already getting the feeling under control. Expertly he masks the frown with a grin, his resentment with wit.

"Making plans? Atherton Wing. He's a regular, ain't he?"

The flower whips a drape across the screen and pays back in kind, with defensive hostility.

"I've seen him before."

And they're off again, tippy-toeing. Not saying what they mean or telling what they feel. _Dancing._ River huffs to herself and leaves them to their waltz. Retreats inside herself as they trade jokes and insults in equal measures.


	2. To Dance - Chapter 2

Serenity is quiet now, lives up to her name. Quiet and calm, still with emptiness. Almost the whole crew went out this time, out to buy fuel and food - _people fuel_. The captain also seeks them some business, his thoughts were full of worry when he left. He needs to find a haul to take with them when they leave, a paying job to feed his crew for another while.

River lies on the upper walkway in the cargo hold and feels the tranquility. She lets her mind edge its way through the ship, out through the hull to touch the crowds outside. There are hundreds of minds there, thousands further out, milling around each other, thinking, feeling. A couple of familiar ones plow their way through, approaching, returning. The amazon is there, and so is the leaf. The captain is not with them, and neither is the ape-man. Sunbeam is, but it takes a while for River to recognize her.

A cloud has drawn in, blocking out the bright rays. River rolls onto her stomach to gaze down into the cargo bay. She sees tears lurking in the corners of sunbeam's eyes, held back only by will and anger. She doesn't even smile at Simon as she passes him by. The clouds have stolen the music of their dance. Silenced the flutter of the heart his presence should start.

The darkened sunbeam unloads her share of the purchases, then she flees deeper into the ship. River watches Simon watch her go, feels his uncertainty, hesitation to act. He doesn't know what to do about a girl upset by something he doesn't understand. _Boob!_ The rest of the crew lets her go as well, gives her space to seek the refuge she needs. Only River follows, already knowing where she will go, where the mechanic girl's place of solace is. It's a place River has found herself as well, seeking shelter from the pain of sensation. In the engine room, at the heart of Serenity, like a child seeking the heartbeat of her mother, that's where she finds her.

A panel is open. Tools spread around. Sunbeam cries quietly, as people do when there's no one to hear. Her feelings grab River like a claw, tugging at something she can't define. Silently she steps inside, closer to the dimmed sunbeam. A part of her knows she should speak. Say something, like Simon does when she sobs into his lap after a bad dream. But her words are not her own anymore, not since the Academy. They took them away and now they won't obey, won't go where she wants. Too often she says the wrong thing, and she doesn't want to say the wrong thing now. She sinks to the floor, moving close, close to sunbeam, lets her body speak things her mouth cannot.

Her presence startles Kaylee, but only for a moment. Then there is warmth inside her, and the memory of an old tabby cat. Recollection of times of being sad and a ball of ginger fur pressing itself into her lap, begging attention and trading it for consolation. They sit silently on the floor, until the tears have all run dry. River doesn't know how, but she knows when it's long enough. She gets to her feet and climbs the stairs out the door, stopping just outside. Her mind lingers, watches the clouds part bit by bit. Skilled hands find their tools again, sunbeam's mind fills with the comfort of mechanics. There's still a little shade left, the anger with its thorns sunk in deep. It'll take something else to make that go away. For now she has done what she can.

She turns to leave, and hears footsteps approach through the kitchen. She knows them by their weight and their rhythm, and by the mind they carry with them. She draws into the shadows, melts away so the captain doesn't see her as he passes by. Watches him lean in through the door to the engine room.

"Kaylee? Kaylee!"

His calls bring the clouds rushing back. It hurts. She feels anger and pain inside her sunbeam, feels it as if it was her own. The sharpness of anger doesn't suit the bright girl, and that truth hurts too.

"I'm not speaking to you, Captain," sunbeam says, but the words are in contradiction with themselves. She's clinging to the anger, tries to not forgive the captain, because he hasn't deserved it yet. River nods to herself. _No forgiveness without an apology._

"Got no need to speak," the captain says, half turning in the door. "Come on. Got a job for you."

River aims a piercing glare at his back walking away, assuming sunbeam will follow 'cause he said so. _He can be so thick sometimes. Or is he?_ There's something moving in him. A sneaky bit with a secret that she can't discern. She tries to focus her mind, tries to grasp the captain's mind. _What is he up to?_ Control slips through her fingers like sand, her mind like her words refusing to obey. _Why's it so much harder to do anything on purpose?_ Disappointed she resorts to tagging along with sunbeam who trails after him muttering something about 'men'.

The captain leads them down the stairs to the little sitting area outside the infirmary. River's mind rushes ahead, leaping like an excited puppy. There's something down there that the captain wants sunbeam to see. Something lying on the couch. Something big and pink and full of ruffles. The clouds in sunbeam's mind disappear like dust in the wind when she sees it. She glows bright as a star in the black, and for a moment River can't tell if she sees the glow with her eyes or her mind. It doesn't matter much. To see the sun again makes her too happy to think.

"Oh, Captain!" sunbeam says, and a twirl of confusion weaves through her rays. "But…why? And how?"

"I need you to come to a party with me, and it turns out this foofaraw is precisely what you need to blend in."

"A party?" Confusion gives way for disbelief. "Is it…? Not Inara's party, is it?"

The captain makes an innocent face. Shrugs as if the thought didn't make his heart flutter with anticipation.

"Well, I suppose it just might be. We're going to get ourselves some business, though, so we'll be going light on the socializing, dong ma?"

Sunbeam nods dutifully, but anyone can see she is only half listening. Her world is full of pink ruffles and her mind sizzling with the dream she'd barely dared to dream come true. The captain smiles: a small, content smirk that only River sees from her perch in the stairs.

"Go on," he says. "Hurry up and get into that thing so we can get going."

A grin as bright as a supernova erupts on sunbeams face. She grabs the dress and hurries off to do as she's told. Silently River pads down the stairs. The captain's mind is easier now, uncomplicated, clearer to see.

"Good," River says to him. Watches him jump in surprise and try to cover it up. She smiles and cocks her head. "Ball will be harder. Dress the fox up in pretty feathers, still won't fit in among the chickens. If you're careful sunbeam's glow will distract, but the flower can still trip the whole carriage."

He regards her, trying to find the words, _any_ words that'll fit to reply to the ones she spoke. She can tell he hasn't understood, but it doesn't bother her much. _He'll see in time_.

"Well…thanks for that…illuminating input," he says in the end, before he stomps away towards his bunk.

Time passes and a while later River finds herself sitting on the catwalk overlooking the cargo hold. The whole crew has gathered to see the captain and sunbeam off. The captain paces, uncomfortable in his tight suit that's so fancy it looks like he might have borrowed it from Simon. He stops, freezes with his eyes on the stairs. Sunbeam has appeared at last, and she is a beautiful sight. The amazon helped her get ready. Washed and scrubbed her. Painted her eyes and laid her hair. Her face glows with joy as a subconscious hand slides down her skirt. The dress is a layered cake of pink and white ombré ruffles swaying lazily when she steps down the stairs.

River's mind flickers back to another time, another girl. A girl that danced in the glittering light of a crystal chandelier. That girl's dress was light and expensively simple, without the many ruffles of sunbeam's poof. The cool silk swirled and flowed around her as she danced, twirling through mindboggling series of pirouettes without ever stopping for a breath. Her hair might have been artfully laid when she began, loops and braids all over her head, but soon it was just a cloud of runaway strands and rippling waves. Just the way she liked it then, and the way she likes it now. So many things have changed – River has changed, in so many ways – that she is a bit surprised to find the things that have not. The dancing girl of the past fades from her view. It was a very different time where she lived, a different life. The girl is broken now, doesn't dance anymore. _Can she even_ _dance?_

Through teary eyes hidden behind a curtain of hair, River watches sunbeam twirl around the captain in her brand new ruffled dress. Sees her shine brighter than she has seen her shine before. _The sunbeam is a flower tonight. A shiny flower of light._ Another image rises from the fogs of her mind, a story her brother used to read her when she was little. She could have read it just as well herself, but she liked the way he did it. Liked sitting close, close and look at the pictures as his voice full of love told of the poor girl who became a princess for a night. _Cinderella. Cinder…ashes. Rising from the ashes like a phoenix reborn. Maybe the broken girl will rise one day. Rise from the ashes of a shattered mind. Rise and dance again._ The thought dampens the ache inside. Dries the tears on her cheeks. _One day, perhaps. Tonight belongs to sunbeam._


	3. To Dance - Chapter 3

The ship is boring when they've gone. River roams through rooms and hallways, lets her mind float where it wants. She begged Simon to go to the ball as well, but he said no. Too close, he said. Too close to the Core and the people searching for her. They have to stay behind, stay inside where it's safe, out of sight. She knows he's right; someone would see her and they would take her. Take her back, back to the Academy. But she would so very much like to go, just to dance again.

Her free-floating mind touches a well of happiness. A spring overflowing with delight, a geyser exploding with ecstasy. It grabs her and takes her breath away, so strong that for a moment she cannot tell to whom the feelings belong. Then she finds them, the leaf and the amazon, intertwined in embrace. They are like the eye of the storm, swirling, dancing like the wind through the forest. Their dance is in many ways not unsimilar to the dance of the flower and the captain, but in many more ways it is completely different. There's the same kind of attraction between them, a mutual gravity inexorably pulling them towards each other. But there are no lies in the forest. Nothing hidden between the foliage and the woman finding rest in its shade. No defensive strategies or security measures, only the open armed fall into the well, tumbling water crashing on the shore, and sweaty, sweaty horizontal dancing.

Her mind wanders on, spins her thoughts. Simon is a dancer too. He dances with sunbeam. A dance that is neither tip toeing defenses or trusted fall, but the stumbling, bumbling shuffle of young feelings and reddened faces. Their dance makes River happy. In those moments of unchoreographed steps she sees her brother forget to worry, tastes in him an emotion of cotton candy and roses. _Everyone dances_ _one way or another. Everyone but the broken girl, the burned out phoenix in her nest of ashes._

Her roving feet lead her to the kitchen where Simon is. The riddle is there too, and the gunman-ape. The three of them are playing some kind of game, but River doesn't really notice. Her mind is wandering much faster now and further than her feet, wandering all the way back to the Academy. She moves through the kitchen, her body in one place and her mind in another. The voice of her brother, the words unclear, is a fragile anchor to keep her from floating away and disappearing completely. A symbol catches her eye; blue letters and characters on white. She knows it. Knows it well, and it fills her with dread. Blue letters, blue characters, _blue, blue…_

She picks it up, picks them up one by one, barely seeing the cans, just the marks they bear. The symbols are like eyes, seeing her, and if the eyes can see the hands will follow. She has to tear them out, tear them off. Make them blind, anonymous. Her fingers find the edges of the tags, rips them off of the cans. She grabs the packages, tries to smash the marks staring at her. Words trickle over her lips.

"These are the ones that take you. They're the ones reaching and doing. They're the ones..."

"River…"

Her brother is by her side, all of a sudden so close. Gently he grabs her, pulls the abused food packages from her hands.

"...everywhere..." she whimpers, "and the hands go everywhere...when you brush your teeth and...and nobody said anything..."

Simon hushes her, holds her so, so gently. It calms her some, his touch bringing her back to here and now, away from the Academy back then and the fear of what no doubt is coming for her. It may seem she and Simon are safe here, but the blue hands are coming – _oh, yes they are coming. They'll see, the eyes will see and find me…_

"...and then they come."

"So, are we gonna play cards or screw around?" the ape-man calls from the table. There's a smug feel about him. He's happy for the distraction she provided – _stole when no one was looking_ – but now he wants to play the game again.

The riddle and Simon stare at him, and she can feel ice lancing through the air. It makes her shudder, and Simon immediately turns his focus back. His kind hands hold on to her as he leads her away, heading for her room and a warm blanket to tuck her in. She lets him wrap her up. Tries to smile reassuringly when he asks how she feels. Shakes her head to the offer of something to help her sleep. He stays with her until she closes her eyes and actually dozes off. She doesn't actually mind terribly much.

A knock wakes her up, reverberating through Serenity's hull and into her very bones. _Someone's here._ She can feel the ape-man's concern, the kind that makes him pick up his gun before he opens the door. Senses him recognizing the man stepping in, though he holds no fondness for him. Her mind touches the man, testingly, and she finds him distasteful. _A thief. Of course, the captain is a thief too, but he is an honest man, an honorable man._ _This one ain't._ This one is an animal, a slippery deceitful beast that cannot be trusted. The ape-man speaks his name as he gathers the others, _Badger_. It suits him. _Mustelidae Taxideinae...or Melinae…or Mellivorinae. A weasel. A short-legged burrowing omnivore that'll turn around and bite you when you're not looking._

"Hey! Moon-brain!" The ape-man's voice cuts through her musings, his not so loving nickname getting her attention. Her eyes find him standing in her door. "Your brother says you should hide."

She nods understanding, and while he hurries off to try and get the drop on the weasel she scurries up the ladder, past the upper dorm rooms, to a small hatch in the ceiling. The hatch leads up into the mid-deck and into the areas between the parts of the ship where people live and work. There are many nooks and crannies on a ship like Serenity, and it hasn't taken River long to find every single one of them. She always was very good at hide-and-go-seek.

She finds a spot she likes in an access crawlway off of the aft hallway. As she settles in to wait, she lets her mind fly through the ship. She finds the crew in the cargo hold. Sunbeam has returned, but she's not shining like a star anymore. There are more strangers too, men with guns and rugged prickly minds. She doesn't like the feel of them. Her mind skitters away, leaves the standoff and seeps into the ship instead. But the calm of Serenity isn't there as it should. Her crew is worried and so she is worried to, her hull vibrating with the longing for her captain.

It must be morning soon. River can feel the world waking outside the ship, the ground heaving itself in expectance of the rising sun. She's been hiding so long, waiting. She has to move. Fluid like water she glides out of her hiding space, trickles soundlessly down the stairs. Now she's outside the infirmary. If she was looking with her eyes she could see the people in the cargo hold through the open door. The ape-man's voice wafts through, not loud enough for the intruders to hear but clear in her mind.

"What we need's a diversion."

 _Diversion – a feint intended to draw off attention from the point of main attack._ Tactical knowledge she shouldn't have rushes through her mind. Knowledge given to her with the intent of turning her into a weapon.A smile dawns on her face. _I_ am _a weapon, but a weapon that uses itself. Did it before, and didn't even mean to. Just have to do it on purpose this time._

She shakes her head, tries to focus. All she needs to do is concentrate. Her mind reaches forward, and finds her friends quickly. The shape of their minds are familiar to her and she can't resist brushing though each of them. The rough small mind of the ape-man whose words gave her the idea. The sunbeam still echoing of the initial fear, even though there is no actual treat to the crew – only to the captain. The amazon who seems so calm on the outside, but is bubbling with pent up energy only waiting for an opportunity to strike. The riddle, who actually is calm, but likewise waiting, biding his time. The leaf, excited, scared, horrified at the thought of the ape-man naked…? River blinks, shakes off the odd impression. Touches her brother's mind before she moves on to the strangers, finds him concerned but relatively calm. The ape-man must have told him she hid away safely.

She skims off the minds of the strangers, don't want to go in, don't need to. It's the leader she wants, the weasel, _Badger_. She follows the paths in his mind, down through the thoughts of the current situation, down through the ambitions and schemes of a petty criminal reaching for the stars. She finds the core of the man, the memories of the childhood that defines him. Digs up something she can use.

Her mind stays inside his as she ascends the stairs and steps over the high threshold. The riddle is the first to spot her, alerting her brother to the potentially dangerous situation. Sunbeam looks, the amazon, even the ape-man is concerned. Simon's worry flares as he rises, washing over her and disrupting her concentration. He intercepts her, tries to make her go back before the intruders see her. She tries to explain, tell him that she can help, but the words won't come out right.

"They are tiny…" she laughs, and it hardly even makes sense to her. It certainly don't make sense to Simon, who tries again to turn her around. _Too late._ The weasel has heard and she grasps at his mind through the haze of Simon's fear.

"Who's that then?" he calls. "Here, look at me. What's your story, love?"

Simon turns around, shielding her, turning his mind away from her and onto the weasel. She uses the space and tries to find her focus again, to remember the pieces she picked from the weasel's mind.

"She's ... just a... just a passenger," she hears her brother say, trying to diffuse the attention, but the weasel isn't fooled.

"Yeah?" he says, looking past Simon, tying to get a clear view of her. "Why ain't she talking? She got a secret?"

 _Secret? Yeah, secrets I've got a plenty. Even some I don't want to keep, but that won't come out with words to be revealed._ She hones in on his voice, molds her own after his.

"Sure, I got a secret. More than one. Don't seem likely I'd tell 'em to you now, do it? Anyone off Dyton Colony knows better than to talk to strangers."

There's a shiny pin on the weasel's lapel, a bird encrusted with jewels. _Not real, brass and glass to make him seem finer than he is._ She reaches out towards it, but lets her finger run down the lapel instead, feeling the lint underlining what she already knows of him.

"You're talking loud enough for the both of us though, ain'tcha?" she continues, adopting an expression of pure disinterest. "I've known a dozen like you. Skipped off home early, running graft jobs here and there. Spent some time in the lock down, but less than you claim. And you're what? Petty thief with delusions of standing? Sad, little king of a sad, little hill."

At the edge of her awareness she notes the crew exchanging glances, hears the thoughts jumping in their minds. They are bemused, surprised, can't believe what they see. _Guess they never expected to hear me say two sentences in a row that make sense._ In truth she hasn't believed it for a long time herself.

"Nice to see someone from the old homestead," the weasel says, hopefully. She lets him down hard, without an ounce of care in her eyes.

"Not really."

With a tilt of her head she speaks to Simon, "Call me if anyone interesting shows up," and then she sweeps back out the door. Behind her in the cargo hold, the ape-man leans in to the others.

"That there," he whispers, with a hint of admiration in his voice, "exactly the kind of diversion we could have used."

Disappointment fills her, tainting the success of what she just managed to do. _But you didn't._ She crawls back up through the engineering shafts and into the access crawlway. Hides away again. She tried, did her part. Not her fault if the others didn't do theirs. Now she'll have to wait again.

As the sun warms Serenity's hull, she catches glimpses of the new plan forged by the crew. But before they are even ready to spring it into action she knows they are too late. She can feel him coming, the captain, steadied by the flower and once again a mix of diverse emotions. There's pain, burning red hot. _He's injured._ And there's joy of several flavors; triumph for a fight won, satisfaction of a brokered deal, and the flutter of being in the flower's grace and embrace.

 _He's back._ _The captain is back!_ It sings through the ship and into her heart, and suddenly everything is well again. The intruders are driven out, the weasel chased away by the captain. Simon patches him up, while the crew share their exciting plans that never came to fruition. There are laughs and merriment.

Shortly the cargo arrives, a herd of bovine minds cramming into the tight space of the cargo hold. River can feel them pressing up against each other, confused, disoriented without the sky above them. They become a mass of meat, living but not alive. Waiting to see the sun again. She knows how they feel, but for her it is the opposite. Planetbound she longs for the black, waits to let her mind soar in the emptiness of space. As the ship kicks off from the ground she leaps ahead of it as far as she can, chasing ahead until her body catches up and she is free. She lets her mind sift through the ship

She finds sunbeam in her bunk. She is bright, bright tonight. No worries. No clouds to block the sun. The taste of bittersweet chocolate is strong in her mind, representing grand dreams that actually came true. Her eyes drink in the pink ruffles hanging on the wall. The dress is hers and it don't matter that the fancy girls at the party all sneered at it. In her mind she is dancing, and for a moment River dances along with her. And River knows, just knows that hope is not lost for the broken girl. _The phoenix will rise, and she will dance. She_ will _dance again._ Her mind dances already, twirls and whirls through the ship. Sweeps by the captain and the flower sitting in the cargo hold, sipping wine that sunbeam has made. Hears them speak and for once she sees ne walls between them. The dance of their words is slow and straightforward, and they almost, just almost say what they really mean. Up in her hiding place River smiles, and her mind dances on.

* * *

 **The End**


End file.
